Issue 42: Spring 2010 - Melbourne Cricket Club

MCC Archives Acc 615_367
The MCCFC were customers of T.W. Sherrin at the
time and reproduced here from MCC Archives is a
Sherrin receipt debited to the Melbourne
Football Club in 1893.
We might hypothesise that there was a problem
with the factory keeping pace with demand or
perhaps there had been an error in estimating
quantity by the club when placing a previous order.
Consultation with MCC football historians, however,
reveals a probable alternative scenario.
It was the practice for match balls to be provided
by the home team and it is likely that the purpose
of Mr Tindall's note was not only to prompt
University to bring back the balls they had
borrowed for the match in Round 8, 1911 but to
remind them of their obligations regarding the
supply of match balls generally.
Other interesting facts enrich this correspondence.
The footballers of University Football Club (known
as “the Students”) often regarded the League
games as recreation and some would miss matches
when course work, field trips, exams and holidays
took priority. University played in the Victorian
Football League from 1908 to 1914 and the Students
were co-tenants with Melbourne at the MCG from
1911 to 1914.
Illustrated here with accompanying transcription is
an example of the first correspondence written in
1910 relating to the use of the ground by University
Football Club.
MCC Archives Series A4.p24.4
General Correspondence – Incoming;
MCC Archives Transcription:
Melbourne University Football Club
September 5 th 1910
Terms on which the MUFC are willing to play their home matches on
the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
1 The Melbourne Cricket Club shall allow the UFC the use of the
necessary accommodation for the purpose of playing their league
football matches on the MCG during the football seasons of the
years 1911, 1912, 1913.
2 The University Football Club are to receive 1/3 (one third) of the
net charges of admission to the ground and of the first sixpence
of each eighteen pence to the ground paid for direct admission to
the stand, after deduction from these charges of all expenses for
advertising, printing, police attendance – any other reasonable
charge incidental to or in connection with the football matches
played by the UFC on the MCG. In addition to this the MCC shall
pay to the UFC 1/6 (one sixth) of the gross takings from the extra
shilling paid for admission to the Grand Stand.
16 The Yorker - Spring 2010